Rainfall And Forests

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Rainfall And Forests

"Meteorologist," Cincinnati, says: "You are doing good service by showing the absurdity mixed with the common sense of meteorology in connection with forestry. That Utah illustration of the increase of rain through Mormon planting when we know that the miners destroy a thousand for every one a Mormon plants, is an old piece of nonsense which we thought shown up long ago. But on the other hand, do not those who contend that forests have no influence on the weather erect a similar absurdity ? It should be understood that no one claims a forest to be the sole cause of meteorological conditions. There is no one cause of the weather. Electricity may be a great cause. The cause of the weather I take to be made up of a vast variety of minor causes, of which the forests are only one".

[And yet not so many causes in one. There is reason to believe that electricity is only a mode of motion.

The " cause " of the weather is not complicated. It is simply heat and cold, as shown in a recent paper. The condensation of moisture which results in rain, is simply the meeting of two currents of different temperatures. A forest may affect this to some degree, as our correspondent says. An atmospheric current sweeping over a thousand miles of hot sand, would certainly be warmer than one sweeping over a thousand miles of forest, but a few acres of forest would have about the same influence, as the raising of one's finger would against the atmospheric current which makes the moisture trickle down an ice pitcher in summer time. - Ed. G. M].